


Maximum Gardening

by Routcliffe



Series: Halvbakt: Short Fantasies [5]
Category: Ylvis
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Memory Palace, Post-Traumatic Stress, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 06:54:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11308059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Routcliffe/pseuds/Routcliffe
Summary: It is May 2017.  Bård is ambivalent about his new powers, but they do come in handy.





	Maximum Gardening

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanted to have the new long thing done and up by now, but I think it's about halfway. In the meantime, please enjoy this self-indulgent little fic that doesn't do a very good job of standing alone.

On a rainy Saturday in May, when it was too wet to garden and too dismal to knit and Maria and the kids were doing their own things, Bård tried to cut down the tree in his mind. He stood in his memory of the route to his old school, Fana Gymnas, and contemplated the great oak on the hillside with its bark like glowing coals and its red and silver foliage. He took all the love and kindness and gentleness and forbearance he could muster, and shaped it, in his hands, into a great and gleaming axe. And he swung it.

The pain was apocalyptic. He went to his knees, shuddering and whimpering and hugging himself, and clung to consciousness, and waited for it to recede. When it was merely agony, he pried the axe out of the wood with a wail that ended in a sob. He’d made a dent, anyway, but it was going to be a long afternoon. He swung again, and dropped again.

And then he wasn’t alone. The axe was pried from his slack hands. “Get out, Brynjar,” he managed to choke out. 

“ _This_ I can’t believe,” Vegard said with a weak laugh, tossing the axe down. It clanged to the sidewalk. “Your own brother.” He put one arm around Bård’s shoulders and the other around his arms and chest and squeezed very tight, rocking him a little. 

“My own brother usually knows better than to barge into my head,” Bård growled. 

“I usually knock before I come into your room, too, but if there was a crash and a bunch of screaming I would run in and not care. What did you think you were _doing?_ ”

“Okay, okay, you can... okay. Okay, just... Okay. _Claustrophobic_ , Vegard.”

Vegard let go of him immediately, and backed off. He was wearing black jogging pants and his red and blue sweater. Bård wondered idly if Vegard was really wearing that today, or if he was imagining himself how he felt the most comfortable. 

He himself wore skinny jeans and his striped sweater. He drew his knees up as far as the jeans would let him, decided it wasn’t far enough, and imagined jogging pants instead. The wound in the tree burned. “I’m getting rid of that tree. I don’t want it anymore.”

“What? _Why?_ ”

“When... when I was starting to realize how... how serious things were last winter, I thought about... I thought about revenge. Daydreamed it, just for a moment. But I knew it was silly, so instead I planted it under this tree, and this happened.” He gestured at the red and silver foliage. Then he held his hand out, and _pulled_ from the tree. His hand was full of red and silver fire now, and when he dropped it, it scorched the underbrush. He looked back at his brother with a shrug. “I want to be a nice, kind, gentle, non-confrontational sort of person, Vegard. I don’t feel like I can do that with a big thundery revenge pillar in the centre of my mind.”

“You having a big thundery revenge pillar in the centre of your mind saved a bunch of lives,” Vegard pointed out. “You don’t have to use it, but it’s there, and it’s _you_. You, you can’t just go cutting off bits of yourself.”

“I don’t want it,” Bård said. “I use this walk to remember all sorts of things. I don’t want it taken over. I can feel it in here sometimes. Like this big sleeping _thing_ that opens an eye whenever I get angry.”

“Tuesday?” Vegard suggested.

Bård shook his head. “Tuesday I was just cranky. No, I guess not every time. Not I-narrowly-missed-every-tram-on-the-way-to-work angry. Not someone-forgot-and-made-this-with-real-milk angry. Not even everybody-shut-up-now-so-I-can-think angry.”

“No, but I felt it in the middle of can’t-you-bloody-hear-someone-raise-their-voice-without-cringing-like-a-kicked-puppy angry,” Vegard said softly. “I definitely felt it turn over then.”

“That wasn’t what that was,” Bård assured him, squeezing his shoulder. “It wasn’t at you. That was look-what-they-did-to-my-brother-and-he’s-still-suffering angry. It stirs up when I think of what happened to you. When I watch the news. Whenever things aren’t _right_.” 

“I still don’t think that’s a good part of you to cut off, Bård. I’ll tell you the reasons why I’m right.” Vegard counted them off with his fingers. “One, it hurts. It hurts a _lot_. And in the same way the extraction did. I don’t think that can be good for you, and it’s absolutely not good for me. Two, it might just grow back. Three, if it doesn’t grow back, I think the part of you that gets angry when something isn’t right is a bad part of you to be missing. Four, it’s the strongest magic you’ve got, and I’m glad you’ve got _something_ , because it doesn’t feel fair to be at Level Eight when you’re Level Two.”

“I don’t mind you being good at your own things,” Bård pointed out. “We’ve always had different strengths.” 

“Not if you keep chopping yours down.”

Bård sighed. Something inside him had already relaxed with relief. “I don’t want to be fuelled by anger.”

Vegard nodded, conceding a fair point. “I think it’s okay to be angry at things that aren’t right, but you don’t want it to be the main thing, do you?”

“Nope.” Bård gingerly adjusted his position so that he was leaning against the tree. The wound in its bark was already sealing. He wasn’t quite convinced, but he already knew that he would never try to make another. He looked up at the expanse of branches, resigned. “Do you think it would take pruning?”

“Let me know if you ever decide to try that,” Vegard said. “I’ll go back to Bali and hope it’s far enough. Look, though, it’s not even the biggest, if that makes you feel better.” He gestured at the hillside the road cut across. “You still have lots of normal oaks.”

“I do,” Bård said thoughtfully. He scrambled up, swaying a little, and walked to an even bigger oak, across the street. It had a map of South America pinned to it, the countries clearly labelled. He stepped over the low chain link fence, put a hand on the bark, and lowered himself until he was sitting on the ground again. Vegard followed uncertainly, and stood in the road, brow furrowed, one hand massaging his jawline. Every so often he looked over his shoulder.

Bård sat with his hands folded, and thought of the last time they’d all gathered in Bergen: Maria and the kids and Mama and Papa and Vegard and Helene and their kids and Bjarte. The smells of dinner, the din of table conversation, everyone laughing. When he pulled his hands apart, there was a ball of light there, green and gold, and looking at it brought tears to his eyes. He dug a hole at the base of this oak, and planted love there.

He brushed off his hands, and stood up, and turned. “How long do you figure it will take that to grow?”

Vegard shrugged, his own eyes shining. He looked over his shoulder again, and scrambled out of the way as a Toyota zoomed past. Then he seemed to realize what had just happened, and made a face. 

Bård brayed with laughter. “Couldn’t resist,” he said. “You kept looking. For traffic. In my _mind_.” He opened his hand. The light of this one was violet. 

Vegard’s frown evaporated, and he started forward, mesmerized. “What’s that one?”

Bård grinned evilly. “Mischief.” He took a few steps into the trees, and found a slightly smaller oak, and deposited the violet light at its base.

“Can I do one?” Vegard asked. 

“Sure,” Bård said. 

Vegard jogged back across the road--he still looked both ways, the goof--and up the drive to where Fana Gymnas loomed. He screwed up his face for a few seconds, and then everything relaxed, and he smiled. In his hands was a midnight blue glow. He buried it at the base of the lilac tree on the lawn. “Music,” he said. 

“I have the power of a cappella!”

“You do. You hold out your microphone and say, ‘Boodleooap!’ and you transform like Sailor Moon.”

Bård pointed his toes and pirouetted, a beatific smile on his face. When the turn was complete, he was wearing a goldenrod scarf and toque. Vegard doubled up on the ground, giggling.

Bård joined him on the ground. Whatever it was doing outside, the day in his mind was sunny, and he got Vegard’s attention by throwing the toque at him. “I have music already, though,” he pointed out, and then he wondered if he really should have. Vegard had lost his music for a few months in the winter. He’d been overjoyed to get it back. It was probably the best gift he could imagine.

“Not here you don’t,” Vegard said. “I mean... this, that you’ve done here, it’s different from what we do with sounds. I’ve heard of memory magic, but it’s not common. They don’t even teach it at Dýranblað, and what Ms. Skogsopp says is that it’s because you need an established memory locus. I’ve tried to look it up a couple of times, but I don’t even know what to look for, properly. So we should experiment a little, but with nice things.” He grinned suddenly, and opened his hand on another ball of light, turquoise and gold. “Admiration.” He handed it to Bård, who scooped earth aside and put it in the ground in the vicinity of a few birches.

Bård thought. What else could he put in? “Vegard,” he said, “can we try something?”

“Sure!”

“What’s your worst memory?”

Vegard’s eyes widened in shock, and he looked all around him for a moment, as if to verify where he was. Then he sat as if the strength had simply gone out of him, and his brow furrowed. His hand played across his collarbone. “I understood it, okay? But right now? You letting me go.” 

“ _That?_ Not the power sink? I still have nightmares. Not the extraction?”

“Not anymore,” Vegard told him, rubbing his upper lip. Then, more softly, “I still have nightmares too.” 

“But not about flying into pieces.”

Vegard looked away from him. His hand wandered to the side of his face. “Not anymore. Anyway, by that time I was used to losing myself.” He twitched his shoulders. “Why?”

“That memory. The worst one. Can you give it to me?”

“What are you going to do with it? You can’t plant it.”

“I want to see what comes up.”

“No no no no no no no no no. You’re not planting it here. This... it doesn’t belong in _your_ head, Bård.”

“It doesn’t belong in yours either.”

“I have a better idea,” Vegard said. He got up and trotted away, and when he returned, he had the axe with him. “This is made of good stuff,” he said, presenting the handle to Bård. Digging together, they planted it. When they’d tamped down the ground around it, Vegard said, “This is nice, isn’t it?”

“What? Yeah... I guess.”

“Well, I’ve always heard that it’s a good feeling to bury the hatchet.”

Bård sat back on his heels and raised his eyes skyward. “Get out of my head, nerd.”

Vegard faded from sight. In the manner of the Cheshire cat, his grin stayed behind for a full forty-six seconds.

***

Bård’s eyes flew open in darkness. The house was silent. The clock said it was 03.13. Maria was next to him, breathing deeply and evenly. Now, awake, he could tell that all of his terror was secondhand. Par for the course, for a Wednesday night. It was particularly bad tonight, but it wasn’t his.

He knew what his brother had said about these, but he tried to send calm and reassurance anyway. They just disappeared, sucked away into the cold. Ashamed, helpless, and very very tired, he went to the window in his thoughts. Vegard had the shutters on his side of it. Bård reached in to close them, as Vegard had assured him he should, but he couldn’t resist looking up. 

A little dark-haired boy clad only in underpants sat in a thing like a dentist’s chair, with iron bands running across his chest and forehead and arms, while a studio audience jeered. He’d broken the rules and gotten it wrong and disappointed the people he loved, and everyone was going to hate him now forever, and the doctor was going to cut out his tongue and his heart because he deserved it and it was the right thing to do. 

Bård vaulted through the window with a roar. He vaporized the iron bands with red and silver fire. He opened his right hand, and the axe of gentleness and forbearance leapt into it. At the first warning swing, the doctor recoiled and disappeared in a puff of glitter. Then Bård lifted up the little boy, holding him tight, and fled back through the window to his own mind. He brought him to what seemed to be the very best place, the sunlit walk to Fana Gymnas, and laid him down on the lawn.

Vegard lay curled up on the long grass, panting, still shaking. He flinched from Bård’s touch. 

Bård settled back against a tree, and sang--at first "Trollmors Vuggevise." Vegard stirred, and aged up. All through “Jeg Trenger Deg,” Vegard ran his knuckles up and down his stubbled jawline. During “It’s My Life” he grew some jogging pants and a t-shirt, and joined in on the chorus. When that was over, Bård cast about for a moment, and then sang, 

“ _I love you. You love me.  
I grew you a revenge tree... _ ”

Vegard smiled and, without opening his eyes, sang,

“ _With a crash and a thud and a give-the-lad-some-room,  
This young man makes things go boom._ ”

Then he opened his eyes and arranged himself into a sitting position, and looked up and all around. “Your head.”

“Yeah. Yours was bad.”

“Yeah.”

“But it’s safe here.”

“Thanks.”

“Tell me what you need.”

“Mm,” Vegard said, brow furrowing.

“I could keep singing.”

“Yeah.”

Bård thought of improvising something, but everything he could think of right now was minor and sad. Then he remembered, and called music out of the garden--a nice bossa nova beat with a playfully wandering bass line and some light acoustic guitar. Lyrics took a lot of focus, so he just scatted along, and Vegard joined in, weaving melodies through his own, until his lips moved less and less and his eyes started closing.

Bård got to the end of a verse, and let the music end with a little flourish. 

“Thanks,” Vegard said, shaking himself awake. “That helped. I keep saying, though, you _can_ just close the door. It’s all right.”

“I tried, but you were a kid. I don’t want to just close the door on that. I don’t want to be the kind of person who could.”

Vegard patted his arm. “I know it must look like a big deal, but it’s really not. There’s nothing in there that can hurt me for real. It’s just my brain, working things out. It’s probably going to do it for a little while, and I... I’m doing what I can for it.”

Bård sat bolt upright. “Bloody hell. That’s why tonight's so bad. You didn’t go to Finn’s last week, did you?”

“Well, I did to see the baby, but it seemed a little crass to raid his liquor cabinet while I was there.”

“Probably true. But he expects you tomorrow.”

Vegard cocked his head. “How do you know?”

“We spoke on the phone earl-- _Last_ night. I guess.” He opened one eye. His bedroom was pitch black after the brightness of his garden, and it disoriented him a little, but he found the clock and closed his eyes and was back on the grass, with sunlight filtering through tree branches. “Four. It’s four.” He looked at his brother, who was fighting to stay awake, and held out a hand. “You know what, though? Give me that memory, of... give me the one you said was the worst.”

“It’s changed now,” Vegard said. “Now it’s Måløy. Getting there and thinking, Oh, I can finally take off these disgusting clothes and clean up...” Tears sprang to his eyes. “...and realizing that I have no clean clothes or soap or shampoo or anything, and my skin is crawling and my socks are stiff and I’m itchy and I stink and there’s not anyone I can ask for help or even complain to, and I’d already been hanging on for so long...” His clothes changed as he was talking, adding ragged filthy layers. His face twisted, and he started running shaking hands over the fabric, plucking at it.

“Tear them off, if it’ll help,” Bård said, making a little encouraging motion with his hands. “They’re in your head. Well. They’re in _my_ head.”

Vegard was already tangled up in a tattered sweater. He subsided suddenly, and put it back on with a grimace. “No no no no no no no no no. You’re right. You’re right.” He exhaled deliberately, and closed his eyes, and ran his knuckles along his jawline, breathing slowly and deeply. His eyes opened, he pursed his lips, and suddenly he was clad in boxer briefs and a clean white t-shirt. His smile was tired but incandescent. And then his brow furrowed, and he grimaced. He opened his hand, showing Bård a lump that was charcoal grey marbled with maroon, rough and dull and misshapen. “Are you sure you want this?”

“I earned it, didn’t I?” Bård took it from him, trying to ignore the cold sick dread of the feel of the thing against his skin. He scratched a hole in the turf and dropped it in, and covered it up with an involuntary shudder.

Vegard rubbed his shoulders. “That did just take the edge off it. But don’t you worry about growing something like that here?”

Bård forgot his discomfort. He rose, and pulled Vegard to his feet, and made a sweeping gesture at the approach to the school. At first glance, things looked pretty normal, but here and there odd tinges of colour or strange flowers drew the eye. The mischief tree had leaves backed in pale mauve, and no two of them were the same. Music had turned the lilacs midnight blue, and the bunches of flowers curled in a way that evoked a treble clef, or the head of a violin. The tree’s leaves chimed faintly when the wind blew. Hatchet-shaped flowers had sprung up where Bård had buried the axe. And love... drew the eye, somehow. It might have been glowing faintly. “After what you said last week, I started to pay really close attention. Planting something here changes it. _I_ change it. I think if I was a worse guy, or even just a less lucky one, I might need to worry about what I grow here, but it gets fed with family, gardening, knitting, golf, and a job that I love.” 

“It still feels safe,” Vegard agreed sleepily. 

Bård watched him blinking and swaying, and said, “You ready to go back?”

“Guess so.”

“And Finn tomorrow.”

“Yeah.”

“Wait here.” Bård jogged across the road, and put his hand on an oak leaf, and asked it a silent question. It detached easily, with a rush of warmth. He jogged back to Vegard, and put it into his brother’s unresisting hand. 

Vegard shot Bård a curious look, and then looked down at the leaf. A slow smile lit his face. “Oh, I get it. Thanks.” 

He folded his hands over the leaf, holding it to his chest. Then he faded from sight, carrying a piece of love back to his own mind.

Bård went back to the oak. He sat with his back to it, soaking up the warmth, lulled by the gentle chiming of the music tree. He slept, and as his focus faded, the garden softened into abstraction.


End file.
